From d49002c2d693ce1a0c5788d2530b71e1f0b82fa1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2024 09:45:10 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- writing/post-self/motes/004.html | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/writing/post-self/motes/004.html b/writing/post-self/motes/004.html index dcf7ab735..624100151 100644 --- a/writing/post-self/motes/004.html +++ b/writing/post-self/motes/004.html @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@

Motes was played with.

She was toyed with. She was dangled by the scruff over the ledge. She was held at the point of the knife. She was backed against the wall with the barrel of a gun to her forehead. She was given a sword and told to fall on it.

Motes was played with. She was laughed at. She was belittled and torn down.

-

The things she loved were turned to ash, astringent and bitter. All of the play she had at the point of a knife was turned fraught with peril. All of the play with death became a threat.

+

The things she loved were turned astringent and bitter. All of the play she had at the point of a knife was turned fraught with peril. All of the play with death became a threat.

All of her play, all of that work she had put into reclaiming all that had been done to her in so many lives, to turning it into a joy or a kink or simple boredom was destroyed. It was the taking of good things and turning them not into something bad, for that was simple guilt, but it was the taking of good things and turning them into something she hated, she resented, she was terrified of. All of the times that she had laughed with joy as she fell to the strike of a sword or the bullet from a gun or the point of a knife in some game or at the hands of some lover were turned to wrongnesses.

It was annihilation. It was the opposite of play — of Motes’s kind of play, this reclamation of childhood. It was a negating of that play. It was a turning of joy into shame, a turning of fun into fear, a turning of laughter to ash before it leaves the mouth.

In her dream, she played a game. She played one of those games where she forked and was rendered bodiless and immobile, while her fork was sent along a series of platforms, leaping from one to another and swiping out at skeletons and liches with a long spear. The version of her doing the attacking had an incomplete view of the world, while the disembodied Motes watched from some distance away, treating the game like a literal platformer, sending instructions to her ‘character’ via sensorium messages.

@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@

This was not supposed to happen.

Michelle/Sasha sneered through that omnipresent exhaustion. “Some mote who styles herself Motes. Some grasper-after-fame. Some fetishist who wishes only to taint the Ode with lurid visions of youth.”

In her free hand/paw, this ghost brought into being a dagger, silver-bladed, wood-hilted, ruby-pommeled. She reached out and slowly, almost tenderly, pressed it into Motes’s paw. Holding her wrist, she brought that paw up so that the tip of the blade was pressed against the skunk’s neck, pricking at the skin over her jugular. When she let go, Motes found her paw remained there, immobile, unresponsive to her efforts to pull it away.

-

“This is your kink, is it not ‘Motes’? Your fetish, ‘Speck’? ‘Skunklet’?” Sasha/Michelle leaned forward, nearly nose to nose, whispered, “‘Dóttir’?”

+

“This is your kink, is it not ‘Motes’? Your fetish, ‘Speck’? ‘Skunklet’?” Sasha/Michelle leaned forward, nearly nose to nose, whispered, “‘Dóttir’?“

Motes sobbed. “Please…” she managed at last.

None of this was supposed to happen. None of this was right.

Michelle/Sasha straightened up and said, almost bored, “Indulge, my dear.”

@@ -151,7 +151,7 @@

“Of course, my dear. I am afraid that I did not do quite the job of comforting you that I might, but I do hope that you take that to heart. Live intentionally, and remember that we love you.”